Ambition

by Julie Burchill

  ‘A CRATE OF PINK CHAMPAGNE EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE’

  ‘MY PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY ROBERT MAPPLE-THORPE’

  One day his secretary answered his phone only to nod and turn to Moorsom with a cryptic message. ‘It was someone called Rupee. He said it rhymed with whoopee and he said you’d understand. The message is, “One large Borzoi, male, dyed puce”.’

  It was this indiscretion which made Moorsom realize that a halt had to be called to the proceedings. That evening he confronted the boy. ‘Rupert, I have no money. If I did, I’d gladly give it you. But these demands have got to stop.’

  ‘Really?’ There was a new note of contempt, class-based contempt, Moorsom couldn’t help feeling, in the boy’s voice. ‘Well, listen to me, my honourable little member, and listen closely because I don’t intend to repeat it. I’ll tell you what’s got to stop, and that’s this horrid deceitful stinginess. I’ll do without the presents – to judge from that awful tie you’re wearing your taste is all in your mouth anyhow – but I want my palimony. I want fifty thousand pounds, JoJo – that’s five oh comma oh oh oh – and I want it soon, while I’m young enough to enjoy it – before my fifteenth birthday. You can take it from the miner’s slush fund or the blind pit ponies’ poor-box or you can do more TV – I don’t care where it comes from. But if doesn’t come soon, your lovely wife and wonderful kiddies are going to see their honourable member splashed all over the front pages one Sunday.’ He smirked, enjoying the look of stunned horror on the man’s face. ‘Won’t that make them sick up their Shreddies?’

  ‘You were right,’ he told her grimly, looking into his Scotch. ‘He’s threatening me. Fifty thousand or he’ll sell his story.’

  ‘Fifty! What does he think you are, a chat-show host?’

  ‘He doesn’t live in the real world, Sue. It’s not his fault. It’s that awful soulless middle-class public-school upbringing—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop making party political broadcasts, Joe! There are a million like him in this city from every walk of life. And stop making excuses for the little tart. He’s a con man, pure and simple.’

  Moorsom was silent. To her horror she saw a tear fall into his empty glass. ‘I love him, Sue.’

  ‘Your wife’s going to love him, too, isn’t she? Not to mention the NUM. Why, they’ll probably sit him on the front float at the next Miners’ Gala and crown him Queen of the May. After they’ve finished lynching you, that is.’ She gnashed her teeth. ‘Look at what you’ve put in jeopardy, just for some diseased little slut with a tight asshole.’

  ‘If you’re going to be obscene there’s no point in going on with this,’ he said primly. ‘I thought that maybe you’d be able to think of some way out, that’s all.’

  She drained her vodka martini and chewed on the lemon twist for a moment. ‘Send him to my office,’ she said finally. ‘Around four, when everyone’s at lunch, tomorrow. He’s young enough to throw a scare into . . .’

  ‘Yes, he’s very young—’

  ‘—but old enough to know better,’ she finished firmly.

  Susan sat behind her desk in her best Nicole Farhi houndstooth suit and looked at the boy very seriously as he came in. She rose and shook his hand solemnly. Around her computers clicked and clattered and by the way he looked around she could tell he already felt out of his depth. Not without reason, he considered newspapers a sort of showbusiness, and showbusiness was what awed him above all. It was a cinch.

  In a quiet but deadly serious voice, she told him about the libel laws of the country and how no newspaper would touch his story. She made most of this up. Then she told him how judges especially disliked blackmail because many of them were homosexual too and dreaded the day they might be put in the same position by some greedy little boy. To ensure against this, they were fond of making an example of every unfortunate would-be young blackmailer who appeared before them. She threw in the Freemasons for good measure and Rupert’s eyes widened. It always worked.

  Having prepared the groundwork, Susan lingered over the entrée. Had he read any books or articles about what went on in juvenile detention centres? Well, it wasn’t a Derek Jarman wet dream of endless communal showers and pillow fights, she could tell him that much. Yes, she reflected, it wasn’t so much what those places had that was scary, as what they didn’t have. No personal effects and little luxuries. No Godiva chocolates. No Perrier. No toilets in the cells, just slop buckets. No shampoo, just soap. By the time she moved on to the severe dearth of mirrors, Rupert had covered his ears and was repeating over and over in a robotic voice that he wanted to go home. She had to call a security guard to help him down the stairs and out of the building.

  That had been three years ago. The boy would be still well under the age of consent. She knew his name and his face and it wouldn’t be too hard to trace him with strategic use of the rentboy community and a cheque book.

  She didn’t even have to do that – just have a word in Joe’s ear, call in her favour. He owed her one.

  If she could persuade Moorsom to drop the matter she could advance herself immeasurably in Pope’s eyes, show him she was an operator, like him, and worthy of his respect. She could probably bring the editorship a step closer and maybe stop these ridiculous tasks.

  But it was blackmail – and such a lousy thing to do to a good man. What could she do?

  The phone rang.

  ‘Sue, it’s a man. He won’t give me his name. He says,’ Kathy laughed, ‘he says he’s one of your victims. Shall I put him through?’

  ‘Go ahead, Kathy.’

  ‘Susan Street?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘You listen, Susan Street, and you listen good. As good as you listened to that lying black whore. You’ve picked the wrong man, girly. I know things about you, Miss Street-Walker, things you wouldn’t want printed in your precious paper. Things you’re very likely to see on the front page of some other rag in the very near future.’

  The French-Yorkshire accent was unmistakable. Sacré bleu bah gum indeed! He could see into the dark heart of international finance and he knew where the body was buried. Why shouldn’t he be able to see into her life too?

  She felt a feeling she was unfamiliar with. Fear.

  SIX

  The beautiful Danish waitress gave them a special big smile because Susan Street was well known as a girl who tipped as big as she talked and drank as hard as she worked. The smile caused Zero to choke on one of the sweet, sticky, lurid drinks her working-class girlhood had left her with a taste for and then to sit up straight in her seat, holding her hands out in front of her like paws, panting.

  The waitress laughed – crazy English – and Liam, the much-loved manager of the Groucho Club, wagged a stern finger at the begging blonde as he passed by on his rounds.

  ‘So—’ Zero lounged back on the sofa, nursing her Midori melon liqueur. ‘What’s the latest in the glamorous life of the dyke I’d most like to stick my finger into?’

  ‘Very funny.’ Susan smoothed the skirt of her royal blue Christian Lacroix suit and wondered what Zero would make of Thalia. Mincemeat, probably. ‘Well, it’s going OK. I’ve shown you my little . . . adornment.’ She touched her fringe. ‘And Rio was – well – it was an orgy, I guess. No more, no less.’

  ‘How many foreign bodies?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘That’s not an orgy, that’s a dinner party. It can’t be an orgy till it reaches two figures.’

  ‘You’d know.’

  ‘So how do you feel?’

  ‘I feel . . . that’s a good question. I suppose I feel . . . strong.’

  ‘Not depressed, disgusted, all those wimpy things women are meant to feel when some man done misuse them?’

  ‘Do me a favour – I don’t suffer from female trouble. But I do feel just a little trepidation about what he’s going to hatch out next. I can’t imagine where we go from here – goldfish?’

  ‘I see a vision.’ Zero stared into her Midori. ‘You w
ill be blindfolded and taken to a basement in Bayswater. You will be bound hand and foot. And you will be powerless to resist as a beautiful blonde from Tiger Bay wearing a twelve-inch dildo makes mad passionate love to you.’

  ‘You wish.’

  ‘I know. I got the gift of prophecy from my old pagan granny, look you.’

  ‘Dream on, baby.’ Susan drained her glass. ‘So how’s the brilliant career of the demon lover. Struck out with anyone but me yet?’

  ‘You’re kidding. I never met a girl I didn’t like. Even the ones that may look like complete dogs at first always turn out to have something perfect about them on closer inspection – even if it’s their eyebrows or their knees. I got this new one, a performance artist from New York; she’s forty and looks twelve. The entire right-hand side of her body is tattooed with the Stars and Stripes. It’s a statement. I’m crazy for her; I adore American women. It’s true what that writer said – they’re a third sex.’

  ‘Two is too many for me.’

  ‘So how’s the girl in your life?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Matthew.’

  ‘Oh, he’s fine. I suppose. We never really talk. Sometimes I insult him. Sometimes he lectures me. But it’s all one-way traffic. There is one thing – sometimes he catches me in the bathroom before work. His new thing is to walk around with a hard on and nothing else on; I don’t know what this is supposed to make me do – jump on him in sheer animal lust, I guess. But it only has the effect of making me take him even less seriously – men look even more ridiculous with their clothes off. Last time, I couldn’t stop myself; I looked straight at it and said, “That reminds me – we’re out of button mushrooms.” ’

  Zero laughed. ‘When I used to go with men and they were hung like hamsters, I’d say, “I didn’t know men had clitori!” when they took their trews off.’

  ‘Another good one is, “What’s wrong, don’t you find me attractive?” when they’re bursting with pride over the size of the thing.’

  They fell against each other, giggling. ‘Designer dykes,’ the man at the next table whispered grimly to his friend. ‘This city is full of them all of a sudden. In five years, it’ll be just as bad as Paris.’

  ‘Talking of cock, you know who’s coming over soon?’ asked Zero. ‘Pope Junior. That gorgeous little Rachel had to book the flight. I heard on the grapevine he is absolutely hideola even for a man. You know the type – makes Phil Collins look like Mel Gibson. You can tell he’s Pope’s son, eh bach?’

  Susan sighed and signalled to the waitress, who was leaning on the bar and casing Zero. Looked like the demon lover of the valleys had scored again. ‘Another ugly American – just what the world needs now.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ Zero had been flicking through Susan’s credit cards, as was her habit each time they met, looking for new affectations to taunt her with, and had found instead her donor card. ‘Look, look – it says here that any part of your body can be used by someone else after you’re dead.’ Looking at Susan wide-eyed, she pouted. ‘Which bit can I use?’

  It was seven-thirty on a Friday evening as she tried yet again to compose a short headline for a new survey which showed that eighty-three per cent of British women found men respectful, committed and caring.

  They obviously hadn’t had the pleasure of Tobias Pope. She sighed, decided on something horribly banal and looked up.

  Pope was standing in the doorway of her office, wearing a camel-hair coat and carrying a silver-headed walking cane, smiling sardonically. She gaped at him.

  ‘Don’t look so thrilled, you ungrateful little slut,’ he whispered as he shook her hand heartily. There were others still around.

  ‘But it’s not . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t got a treat in store for you. This is just a social call. I happened to be in town on business.’

  ‘Funny business.’

  ‘Television business.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ She looked at him warily.

  ‘We’re going to see a girl at her flat, and then we’re having dinner at Langan’s, and then we’re going to see a pop group go through their paces. How does that grab you?’

  ‘Great.’ She yawned.

  ‘Your enthusiasm kills me. Now, who’s this penny-ante little politico we’ve got to wipe off the board?’

  Susan recognized the girl who opened the door of the Lowndes Square flat straight away. Lady Caroline Malaise; vaguely aristocratic, probably somewhat royal, she had starred in a clutch of soft-focus, semi-commercial soft-porn films some years ago, always as a gently born young Englishwoman copiously shedding clothes and virginity in various leafy dells, wooden baths and minstrel galleries. Her resemblance to a blonder, more luminous Princess Diana had driven the foreign paparazzi, particularly the Italians, mad. That was when the photographs of her and Pope, forever leaving Annabel’s and the Clermont, had been in all the papers. Very little had been seen of her since and, opening the door, she seemed smaller and thinner than her likeness.

  But, Susan had learned, so were most people. Apart from Tobias Pope.

  Brisk introductions were made and the driver was briefed. During pre-dinner drinks, Susan noticed that Caroline had an odd eye. She tried to stop herself from looking at it but was irresistibly drawn. A couple of times Pope caught her staring, and smiled in a manner best described as unwholesome. The third time, he threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Show Miss Street your eye, Caroline.’

  To Susan’s horror the girl lowered her head, poked at her eye and wordlessly extended it on her palm across the table. The lid closed over the socket and Susan’s stomach lurched.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. Performed with exactly the insouciant sang froid that made you famous, albeit briefly.’ He turned to Susan. ‘Several years ago I was dining with Caroline in St James’s and a young fan, a fan of her tasteful art films no doubt, winked at her. Being relatively free of airs and graces for one of her caste, she winked back. And no doubt the young fan in question went home and had many happy wet dreams at the thought of it.’ He sighed deeply. ‘But unfortunately, later that evening, back at Caro’s flat, I was a little clumsy with the champagne we were having as a nightcap. The cork, you know. Took the poor girl’s eye out. Accident, of course, but rather lyrically Biblical, don’t you think? An eye for an eye . . .’

  Her oysters lay untouched in front of her. A wife in a clinic, Cristina Montes dead, Caroline Malaise eyeless in Langan’s and herself sitting there like a lemon with SOLD tattooed on her face – Tobias Pope was certainly the answer to a maiden’s prayer, you had to say that for him. She couldn’t eat, didn’t eat, begging off a main course by pleading a late and large lunch. But no one was fooled. She was grateful when they paid the bill and piled into the car.

  ‘Which band are we seeing?’ she asked Pope.

  Caroline answered. ‘My little sister, Candida, and her shower, worse luck. They’re called Fuck U, I’m afraid. That’s like in U and non-U.’

  ‘They’re obnoxious young aristos with more money than sense and more fingers than braincells,’ cut in Pope. ‘Still I think they have a gimmick. People are sick of yobs. They like having their noses rubbed in the dirt by their betters. Why do you think they elected your good leader?’

  ‘Oh, Toby, Mrs Thatcher’s not an aristocrat. That’s the whole point.’ Caroline laughed fondly.

  ‘Ah, yes. I understand the difference. That’s why she rules the country while you are engaged in the important business of sticking your trust fund in your arm.’

  Caroline bit her lip.

  Susan was not overfond of clubs – she had gone to too many while she was knocking around with the god-like Gary pride – and she was relieved when they were whisked backstage and settled sidestage by one of the boys at the door. Within minutes four young men in dinner jackets led by a girl in a pink Lindka Cierach ball dress were striding purposefully towards them.

  The girl had long, brazen blonde curls and a cleavage the colour of bread-an
d-butter pudding. She looked as though she had been fed intravenously on English nursery food for most of her young life. ‘Hello, babes. Hello, Tobes.’ She stared rudely at Susan. ‘Don’t think I know you.’

  ‘Umm . . . Susie Street,’ mumbled Caroline.

  ‘Oh, rilly! Are you anything to do with Lulu and Mumu Street? Great fun at their place in Gloucestershire last month! Didn’t see you there though.’

  ‘Candida, Susan is not a Gloucestershire Street. She is a wrong side of the Street.’ Tobias smirked.

  ‘Oh, rilly ?’ She giggled. ‘I don’t think you’ll like our songs much, Susie!’

  ‘Tell Susie what they’re called, Candy.’

  ‘Well, there’s, “We’re All Going On A Peasant Shoot”, “The Porsche Will Always Be With Us”, “Let Them Eat Humble Pie” . . . lots and lots, rilly. And every one a number one, right, Tobes?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Kids!’ A young man in his early thirties with slicked-down hair, a briefcase and a cellular phone hanging from his ear like some exotic Yoruba adornment buzzed up to them. ‘On in five minutes, right?’

  ‘OK, Gaz.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, Gaz, right?’

  ‘Hello, Mr Pope. Glad you could make it.’

  ‘Your pleasure, Gary. Gary Prince, you know Caroline . . . and this is Susan Street.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Susan.’ He shook her hand formally, trying to work out who she was and how useful she could be.

  Susan Street stared. It was Gary Pride, the virgin’s friend! And he genuinely didn’t recognize her!

  She’d heard he’d had ECT. But he seemed OK, apart from a ferocious tic and the fact that his memory didn’t appear to go further back than the day before yesterday.

  The parade passed by. Pope turned to Susan. ‘You used to write about this awful noise, didn’t you? Watch this lot, and tell me if they’ve got anything. I don’t know. Actually, don’t bother. I’m buying them for the way they look and where they are in Debrett, not what they sound like. The audience I’ve got in mind never listen to anything but the sound of their own voices anyhow. You’ve heard of rich Americans buying titles? Well, I’m the rich American and they’re the titles.’